


(Im)Perfection, or: With a Little Help from My Friend

by Toms_girl



Series: For the Love of Tom [3]
Category: British Actor RPF, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Reality, Budding Love, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Inspired by Real Events, Real Life, Safer Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 06:20:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15188681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toms_girl/pseuds/Toms_girl
Summary: This is the story of how Tom and his girl first met and fell in love. It is also a story about friendship and about how we never appreciate the good things in our lives enough. Life is short.  Try to find something to be happy about in every day and don’t worry too much about unimportant things. Fortunately, Tom and his girl learn this lesson just in time.





	(Im)Perfection, or: With a Little Help from My Friend

With a bang, I slammed shut the door behind me and stormed off down the street. I had never felt so angry and frustrated in my life. The freezing air lapped at me, trying to get into my open coat and underneath my arms which I held firmly crossed above my chest. Though underneath my coat I was still wearing nothing but the track suit bottoms and long-sleeved shirt I had slept in, I did not even feel the cold as I stalked through the streets of our neighbourhood in London, trying to calm down. Tom and I had been fighting, and although there had been other fights before, this one had been bad.

It had started innocently enough: Getting up a few hours after Tom had as I usually did, I walked into the bathroom to take a shower and found the bathroom window wide open and the room icy. Although it was a few degrees below zero outside, Tom had gotten up early to go for a run as he did every morning. And when he came back, he took a shower, opened the window and promptly forgot about it. This happened all too frequently despite my having asked him a hundred times to close the window for my sake.

I stood on the tiled floor with bare feet, shivering with the cold and a sudden fury. How could he be so thoughtless, so inconsiderate of my needs, of my existence even? It seemed to me as if he didn’t really want me there, in his house, in the first place if he couldn’t even be bothered to remember that there was somebody else around who might like to take a shower in the morning without freezing to a popsicle. Steaming, I stalked out of the bathroom and towards his study where he was working. When he saw my face, his smile faded quickly.

“Oh god, what is it now?” he sighed. That enraged me even more, and I railed at him.

“How many fucking times do I have to tell you to close the window in the bathroom? It’s fucking freezing in there!”

He made a small gesture as if to say, _not this again_ , and turned away. Unwilling to let myself be brushed off like that, I bellowed at him: “I’m a person, you know, not some kind of – fuck puppet, and you can’t live here anymore as if you were the only person on the fucking planet!”

A short silence followed this outburst. I don’t know what I expected his reaction to be, but I certainly did not expect the one I got: he started to laugh.

“Are you fucking serious? Oh man, I’m so tired of this shit. Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?”

“All I want is not to have to take a shower in the fucking freezer! Is that too much to ask?” “But that’s just it, isn’t it? That is not all you want,” he shot back in a glib tone of voice. “I’m very sorry, my little fuck puppet, that I didn’t correctly comply with one of your countless fucking demands! Jesus! I can’t even breathe sometimes for things I’m supposedly doing wrong!”

“Oh yeah?” I snapped. “Name one!”

And we were off. The whole thing had quickly deteriorated into a shouting match about who never did this and who always did that, about who had said what and in what tone of voice. Finally, when it was clear that there was no coming back to a neutral discussion and that it was now only about how much personal injury we both could inflict, I had stepped out.

What had frightened me about the whole thing hadn’t been that we had shouted at each other. Coming from a family that both loved and fought fiercely, I had always held shouting to be an integral part of a healthy fight, a way to clear the air for reconciliation. No, what had frightened me had been the immediate hostility and sarcasm and, more than anything, the frustrating impasse at which we had found ourselves, both uttering the terrible sentence, _I can’t go on like this!_ I did not know if there was a way back from that.

 

When I reached Regent’s Park, it started to snow lightly but steadily, and after a few minutes, everything around me was covered in a glittery white coat. It was early Sunday morning. Tourists and Londoners alike seemed to be largely still in bed, and I was completely alone in this stretch of the park. The only thing I could hear was the crunching sound of my footsteps in the new snow. The complete silence of the pristine white landscape calmed me considerably, and I started to think about what had just happened.

There was no question whether I wanted to stay with Tom. I had never been as happy in my life as I was with him. However, getting to know him had also meant discovering that he was not quite as perfect as he had seemed from a distance – which was to be expected, of course. But still – a huge part of what had attracted me to him had been his seemingly perfect character. Not only was he an amazingly good actor with a perfect physique and a face to die for, he also seemed to the most considerate, caring and empathetic person on earth. He was open-hearted and curious and optimistic and so, so considerate of all his fellow human beings. I had fallen for him because of his character as much as his out-of-this-world looks – even though I had known this perfect impression was unsustainable. Nobody was that perfect, as I had discovered when I finally got to know Tom. The discovery that he was just human after all – though admittedly one of the best there was – had not been easy for me.

Turning a corner, I came across a mobile coffee shop operated out of a small van with a bored-looking vendor in mittens and ear-muffs waiting for customers. With some change I found at the bottom of my coat pocket I bought a large cup of herbal tea and, despite the cold, sat down on a park bench nearby. _Who would’ve thought I’d ever have problems like this_ , I thought contemplating the undisturbed white landscape. _Fighting about the temperature in my dream boyfriend’s bathroom. Stomping off into the snow because Tom fucking Hiddleston is not perfect enough for me. If anybody had told me that three years ago, I would have laughed in their face._

 

~~~~

 

Three years ago, I had lived in another country, working a dead-end job and routinely driving my friends to distraction with my all-consuming obsession with the actor Tom Hiddleston. I spent almost every minute of my free time watching his films and TV work and talking about how gorgeous and perfect he was and how much I loved him, and none of my friends could stand it any longer.

“This is ridiculous,” my best friend Liz told me not for the first time. “You are behaving like a 16-year-old. Remind me, how old are you again?”

"Thirty-four, as you very well know. And I’m sorry, but I can’t help it! There’s something different about him, he’s not just another good-looking actor to me. He’s almost unbelievably – perfect.”

“Come on, would you listen to yourself? Nobody’s perfect. Not even your precious Tommy boy.”

“Well, he certainly seems that way. But there’s more: every time I look at him or hear him talk or see him act, I get this irresistible feeling like – I don’t know, like he’s my soulmate or something. Like we should be together, like it was pre-ordained.”

“Jesus!” Liz exhaled slowly and pointedly. “Well then, if that’s the case, I guess there’s nothing for it. May I just say, for the record: you are a complete nutcase. But you are also my best friend and I love you. So –“ She looked me dead in the eye. “You’ll have to try and meet him. Then you’ll see – either he’s really that perfect and you can, I don’t know, seduce him, have his babies and live happily ever after or something. Or he’s not, and then maybe you’ll finally be cured of this madness.”

“Meet him?” I said, gulping. I wasn’t as though I wasn’t as frustrated as my friends were with the current state of affairs, but the thought of taking the next step made me nervous – though I had of course dreamed about it many times. “How would I go about that?”

“How would I know?” Liz replied. “Since I presume you don’t have his number, why don’t you just write him a letter?”

These words stuck with me, and a month went by in which I mulled them over in my mind. What if I wrote him and he did not reply? That was the most likely outcome, of course. The man must be getting hundreds of letters each day, and I knew that all fan mail went through his agency anyway. Chances were he would never even see my letter. But if he did – and if he did reply – what then? I decided to give it a try.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I drafted and discarded several letters in which I tried to find words for what he meant to me, words that conveyed the depth of my feelings but did not sound creepy or invasive, without much luck. Finally, I threw away a draft that went to more than ten pages without getting to the right point and decided to start from scratch. In every letter, I had kept coming back to the problem that I did not really know him. Having watched every interview he ever gave and read every article about him ever written, naturally I felt I knew him, knew what constituted his character, what he loved and did not like and what, consequently, made us perfect for each other. But how could I tell him this without sounding presumptuous and like a dangerous stalker? He would argue that I did not know him, could not know him since we had never met, and he would be right, of course.

So I decided to entirely change my strategy. One day at a local newsagent’s I impulsively picked up a postcard with a picture of Anne Bancroft as Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. On it, I wrote:

_Dear Tom,_

_I’m a huge fan of your work. You seem like the most extraordinary person. I would very much like to get to know you. I think we have a lot in common. Do you ever get the feeling there’s something missing from your life, something that belongs with you? I feel like I might find it with you. I’ll be in London for a week in August on a sort of Shakespeare pilgrimage. If you’d like to meet up, give me a ring._

I put down my mobile number, signed my name and sealed the postcard in an envelope addressed to his agency. On the next day, I posted the letter with my heart in my mouth. Then, I waited.

For weeks, nothing happened. I went to work, went home, ate, slept, and after a few weeks I stopped obsessively checking my phone every few minutes. My experiment had failed, it seems.

“That’s it,” I told Liz. “I’m gonna die unhappy and alone, surrounded by cats and pictures of Tom Hiddleston!”

She chuckled. “I’m sorry, sweetie. But it was worth a try.”

Things went back to normal after that. I started planning my trip to London in August: visits to several museums and sights, Kew Gardens, Hampton Court and a play every other evening. The memory of what else my trip could have held in store was only faintly painful at the back of my mind.

 

Then, one muggy afternoon in mid-July, I was sitting in my non-air-conditioned office, trying to stave off work by idly gazing out of the window into the park next to the office building. People were sitting in the sun, talking, laughing; some had even started early barbecues. Knowing I would have to work at least another three hours, I sighed. My phone started ringing, and I reluctantly picked it up off the table. The caller was anonymous – that normally meant my mum was calling. After briefly contemplating letting it go to voicemail and calling her back later, I picked up.

“Yes?”

“Hi. This is Tom.”

My heart stopped for what felt like a full minute. That voice, soft, resonating, warm – a voice I knew like the inside of my pocket. Could this be real?

“I’m sorry, I might’ve gotten the wrong number. Is this –“

I recovered quickly. “Yes. It’s me. It’s the right number. Hi!”

“I got your postcard. Well, obviously. Thanks for that.”

“My pleasure. Thank you for calling me.”

A pause. “Oh, I had to. I was very intrigued by what you said on your postcard. That you wanted to get to know me. That we have a lot in common.”

I cringed at hearing him repeat my words. It all sounded so pretentious now. I absolutely expected him to ask me who the hell I thought I was next. My tongue felt like it was made of a ton of bricks.

“And that picture,” Tom continued. “I’ve always loved that film. Yeah, as I said, I’d really love to know more about you, too.”

My heart skipped another beat or five. Had he really just said that?

“Oh, wow, that’s great! I mean, I’m happy to hear that. Though you do realise I’m not Anne Bancroft?”

He chuckled. My heart exploded in my chest. I had made him chuckle, had caused the famous Hiddles laugh, and with a mediocre joke at that!

“Yes, I do. So, would you still like to meet me in August when you’re in town?”

 _Yes, a thousand times yes!_ , my heart screamed. Trying to appear calm, I answered: “Yes, I’d love to. I’ll be in London from the 20th until the 28th.”

“Excellent. So let’s see – How about the 22nd, that’s a Thursday. Are you free then?”

“Yes, I am,” I replied, absent-mindedly doodling a huge heart into my calendar on August 22. “Erm – where should we meet?”

He cleared his throat. “Would it be ok for you to meet at my place?”

I felt another brief skip in my heartbeat, but this time accompanied by a tiny alarm bell. Under normal circumstances, I would never consent to meet a stranger in his home for the first time. Although I could understand the reasoning behind this – if we met in a public place somewhere in London, it would probably be all over the papers the next day – it was a risk to trust him that far already. In the end, what decided me was the thought that, in his position, the risk he took giving a stranger his home address was more or less the same.

Suddenly, I heard Liz’s voice in the back of my mind saying, _I don’t know, seduce him or something_. I took a deep breath. Even thinking about that possibility got me very dizzy and hot in a matter of seconds.

“Yes. Yes, I would love that.”

“Great. I’ll text you my home address. And also my phone number. Shall we say 6 p.m.?”

“Yes, fine. Wow.” The strangeness of the situation momentarily overwhelmed me. “I’m really very much looking forward to meeting you.”

I could hear him smile through the telephone. “So am I. Very much so. See you on the 22nd then. Oh, and one more thing.” He lowered his voice and sounded almost apologetic. “I don’t really have to tell you this, I suppose, but please don’t tell anybody about this, ok? I mean, you can tell a friend or two so they’ll know where you are but – I’m sorry, it’s just a precaution I have to take.”

“Don’t worry, Tom.” Tom. There. I had said his name. To him. “I completely understand. I won’t tell anybody.”

“Thanks a lot. Ok, I have to go, I’m sorry. See you soon. Bye!”

“Bye!”

And that was it. A few moments later, a text message with his home address and his phone number came as promised. I sat at my desk for a long while, staring at my phone in disbelief.

_I have a feeling I might find something too. See you in a month. xx Tom_

That month was both the shortest and the longest of my life.

 

I fussed endlessly about what I was going to wear for my date with Tom Hiddleston and, more importantly, what I was going to say to him when we finally met. I wanted to shout it all from the rooftops – the happiness, the crippling anxiety, the sheer blind luck – but since I could not tell the world, I made do with telling Liz, over and over again. I had called her as soon as my brain had recovered most of its functionality on the day Tom had first called me.

“Liiiiiizz, you won’t believe what just happened to me!!!” I shouted at her as soon as she picked up the phone.

“Ouch!” I could literally hear her holding the phone further away from her ear. “What’s all this? Why are you shouting at me? Who’s dead?”

I could not contain my excitement. “What? Nobody’s dead. Lizzy, I have to tell you something, oh god, it’s so incredibly amazing, I have to tell someone or I’m gonna burst in a second! But it’s a secret, you can’t tell anybody! Are you alone right now? Do you swear not to tell a soul?”

“Yes, I swear. Jesus H. Christ, this had better be good.”

“It is! I’m going on a date, and you’ll never guess who with!”

“Hit me then.”

“Tom! Tom Hiddleston! I’m going on a date with Tom Hiddleston!!!”

“Wait, what? Are you taking the piss?”

“No! It’s true, I swear it! I wrote him a letter, like you said, and gave him my number, and then he called me! He called me, completely out of the blue, just a minute ago! And he texted me his number, too! And his address, I can show it to you if you don’t believe me!”

A pause. “Holy guacamole! No, no, I believe you. Wow!”

Another pause – she obviously had to gather her thoughts while I waited with baited breath. Somehow, only through the act of telling Liz about what had just happened to me could I make sure it had not all been a dream. Her reaction would mark it on the timeline of our friendship and make it a reality.

“Wow. That’s a real shocker. And when will this momentous occasion take place?”

“On August 22. Only a month away! Oh Liz, what am I gonna do?”

 

Liz, being the trooper that she is, kept coming back to that question with me countless times during that month. She even counted down the days for me, so that every morning I woke up to a text from Liz saying, _Only 25 days to go!_ – _Only 13 days to go!_ – _Only 6 days to go!_ She helped me pick out the perfect outfit for the date – casual but still looking like I had made an effort, not too revealing but still sexy, adaptable to all kinds of weather conditions and – most importantly – something I felt really comfortable in. And she settled the delicate question of whether or not to bring condoms for me.

“It’s a date. You bring condoms. Them’s the rules.”

“But won’t it look a little forward –“

“Do you want to have sex with him?”

“Oh god, yes! But what if he doesn’t want to have sex with me?”

“Well, then he’ll never know, or do you think he’ll search through your handbag while you’re in the loo?”

“No, of course not.”

“That’s settled then. And if he wants you too, he’ll be glad you have brought protection, won’t he?”

I had had to agree, and thinking in such detail about the – now very real – possibility of ending up in bed with Tom Hiddleston kept me in a constant state of semi-arousal while I waited for the minutes and hours and days to tick by. This was not helped by new pictures of him walking the streets of London which appeared in my Facebook feed almost daily. He looked unbelievably gorgeous as usual, even in track-suit bottoms and t-shirt. Looking at these photos, clearly taken after the day that had marked the start of our acquaintance, I could not help but wonder: did he sometimes think about me? Maybe even at the moment this picture was taken?

Twice during the longest month in history, my phone’s screen lit up with a text from _Tom_ and stopped my heart. A photo taken of a picture postcard showing Dustin Hoffman staring at Anne Bancroft’s leg and the caption, _This made me think of you. Looking forward to the 22nd. xx Tom_. The second time, another picture, this time of the First Folio with Tom’s hand on it, long slender fingers protectively wrapped in a glove, and the caption, _Touching the treasure. Something for your pilgrimage? xx Tom_ _._ I loved how casual this felt, as if he had already decided that we were going to be great friends – if not more. That gave me back some of my accustomed self-confidence, and I even managed to reply a bit cheekily to his texts. After the first, I took a picture of a display of Thor: The Dark World DVDs with a huge cardboard cut-out of both Chris and Tom in a local media store. This I sent to him with the caption, _This made me think of you. Like the hair! xx_ Following his second text, I even wrote, _Dream come true! Second date? xx_ , to which he replied with a simple, single heart emoji. I don’t remember much of that day after that.

 

Finally, the day of my departure for London arrived. Liz hugged me tightly at the airport.

“Only two days now!” she said. “I’m with you every step of the way, sister – erm, up until his bedroom door, I mean. But I’m sure you’ll manage from there.”

She winked, and I kissed her in silent gratitude before going through security. Nervousness, excitement and anxiety had built up to such a degree in my throat by then, I could not have uttered one word anyway.

Arriving at Heathrow and taking the tube into town had always felt like coming home, even then. I had landed in the early afternoon and, after checking in at my hotel, was strolling along the river on the Southbank, talking in all the familiar sounds and smells and generally enjoying the sensation of being where everything was just right again. I had always loved London and dreamed about moving there one day.

I sat down on a bench near the BFI and thought about Tom. It felt absolutely incredible that he was here somewhere, probably less than a few miles away. Even more astonishing still was the thought that he knew of my existence as well and might even be thinking the same thing about me at this very minute. I decided to text him to inform him of my safe arrival.

During the flight, somewhere over the channel, I had realised Tom had no idea what I looked like. This had been cause for another spike in anxiety because, like most people, I do not consider myself especially good-looking. Sure, I have got some features I like the look of – eyes that change from light brown to dark green depending on the light, thick shiny hair of a rich mahogany colour, full lips – but nothing on the scale of Tom’s unearthly beauty. And not only was he stunningly gorgeous himself, his Hollywood fame had surrounded him with tons of willowy sirens styled to perfection. I did not normally think of myself as ugly, but I was just a normal woman in her mid-thirties. Compared to these women, would I even register? If he had not found someone to love – or share his bed – among these amazons, why would he choose me?

 _Courage!_ , I told myself. I had plenty to offer apart from my looks, and they were not all that bad to begin with. Slowly, I started to gather my self-confidence. Either way, sending him a picture now would give him a head start and soften the blow if he really did not like the look of me. And if he did – well, why not whet his appetite now?

I took out my phone and snapped a quick selfie with the river, the Eye and Whitehall in the background. Then, with my heart in my mouth, I sent it to him with the caption, _Well I’m here. See you in a bit. xx_ Quickly, I put the phone back in my pocket and resolved not to look at it again for at least thirty minutes. Two minutes later, I broke that resolution, but there was no reply. Up until now, he had always replied almost instantly. I told myself not to be silly, put the phone away and went to see if there was place for me at the Southbank _Wagamama_.

Forty minutes later, enjoying the view of the river while washing down my meal with the last of a freshly pressed organic juice, I looked at my phone again. Still no message. Immediately, my mind rushed to the conclusion that he had not liked my picture and was now trying to think of a way to get out of our date. _So that’s that_ , I thought. _Who did I think I was kidding anyway?_ My heart sank to the bottom of my stomach, and dejectedly I started to put away the phone and pick up the pieces of my dream, when it suddenly buzzed in my hand – once – twice. It was a message from him, and a picture.

Would this be the rejection, faultlessly polite but unmistakeable nonetheless, that it took him three quarters of an hour to compose? Anxiously, I tapped the message. It read: _Wow, you are absolutely gorgeous! I can’t wait to meet you in person._ The picture showed him, sitting in what looked like a pub or café somewhere, looking directly into the camera, his face lit up with his glorious smile. It was captioned: _Just plain old me sitting in my local and thinking of you. xx Tom_

A delirious rush of endorphins almost made me faint on the spot. He must have really liked what he saw, and there was now no doubt about the fact that I had managed to capture and occupy at least a part of his mind. Thinking of me! After so much time dreaming about him when he had no inkling I existed, this was indescribably amazing. And the picture – naturally, I had seen his famous smile countless times, but this was different. This was not an official press photo or a pic somebody had snapped of him on the red carpet. No, this was private, this was just for me and would not be looked at by thousands of other people. That, and the fact that it was very obviously the thought of me that had put this gorgeous smile on his face, made me ferociously happy almost beyond endurance.

 

The next two days flew by in a whirl. I had packed my sightseeing schedule tightly in order to take my mind off my anxiety, and the whole time, Tom and I kept texting each other almost constantly. It was clear that he could not bear to wait until we finally met, no more than I could.

Finally, the day of the date was here, and at five minutes to six, I stood in front of his house. There had been no sightseeing on that day – I had spent the day in a spa in order to mentally and physically prepare myself. Well-scrubbed, made-up and perfumed and completely unable to take control of the butterflies wreaking havoc in my stomach, I now raised my hand to his doorbell. The thought, the knowledge that he was just behind this door, only a few feet away, drove me almost insane. I had never seen him in person in real life, not even from a distance. And now – this. I cleared my throat for the thousandth time and rang the bell.

The door opened barely five seconds later, and there he was. Towering over me, his lean frame lightly leaning to one side. His endless legs clad in grey slim jeans, the sleeves of his light blue shirt rolled up to his elbows, which perfectly accentuated his slender wrists and hands. His shirt open one button more than was strictly necessary, giving me a tantalising glimpse of his almost hairless chest. His muscular shoulders rolled back, the fit of his shirt tight around his torso. And his face – he wore his glasses, and his eyes sparkled as they looked into mine for the first time. His huge smile shone and stunned me on the spot. Like an animal caught in the headlights, I gazed at him, absolutely speechless.

“There you are!” he said. “I’m really happy to finally meet you.” He hesitated, looked down, then up again into my eyes. I melted instantly. “May I give you a hug?”

Still unable to speak, I nodded, and he pulled me into a gentle, but tight embrace. _God, he smells like heaven_ , I thought, trying not to hyperventilate. This moment that I had dreamed about for so long – my hands touching this magnificent body, his overwhelming beauty, the fact that his attention was completely focussed on me, that he smiled just for me – it was all too much, and it took everything I had not to cry. Instead, I focussed on another sensation. Being crushed so tight against his body, smelling him and feeling the muscles of his chest move against me while his hands lightly rubbed my back, I became more aroused each second. His body felt firm and warm to my touch, and I let my hands slip down to the small of his back which was deliciously tapered and slender. I could not help but think of what possibilities this evening held in store and gulped. He must have been thinking something similar because when he let me go, still holding me at arm’s length and looking me up and down, his lips curled a little wickedly.

“You look absolutely beautiful,” he told me.

Finally, I found my voice. “Thank you! And thanks for inviting me. I’m very happy to finally meet you, too.”

“My absolute pleasure. Come on in!” he said and stepped aside so that I could enter.

At first glance, his house seemed well-furnished but a little neglected, like it had not really been lived in for some time. The most impressive thing Tom led me past was a bookcase that covered a whole wall from top to bottom and from side to side. It was completely crammed full of books of all sizes and colours, with more books lying on the floor in front of it in neat stacks. I stopped.

“What a dream!” I said, indicating the tons of books. He smiled. “You know, I was an English lit major at uni, so I’ve always loved crowded bookcases like that.”

“Oh yes, me too,” he said. “In fact, this is one of my favourite spots in the house.” He opened his arms to include a comfortable-looking upholstered armchair sat next to a small table and a reading lamp in the description. “There’s nothing quite like kicking off your shoes and curling up with a book to unwind after a stressful day, is there? I only wish I had more time to read!” He longingly gazed at the armchair, then smiled at me. “Come along to the kitchen. Would you like a drink?”

“Yes, please. A glass of water would be great.” I knew that if I started drinking alcohol just yet, I would fall over myself in under half an hour.

As we stepped into the kitchen, I was surprised to see it was of the functional, no-nonsense variety and a bit on the small side. Although it had all necessary equipment, it was a far cry from the flashy celeb kitchen I had expected. Tom handed me a glass of water, half of which I gratefully drank instantly. I had calmed down a bit now, but my throat felt very dry and my heart was still hammering in my chest. I watched him move through the kitchen with practised ease and fluidity. He quickly looked into the oven, and a delicious smell wafted out of it.

“That smells fantastic,” I said. “What is it?”

He smiled shyly. “It’s Bolognese ragout. My favourite recipe. Nothing fancy, but –” He threw me a mischievous look. “It’s best to keep to the tried and true if you want to impress someone, right?”

I had to laugh. “Believe me, I’m impressed enough as it is. To be here, in this house, with you –” I beamed at him and, to my astonishment, he actually blushed. “And I didn’t expect you to make me dinner,” I added quickly. “So thank you very much for that!”

“Let’s see what it tastes like first,” he chuckled. “Will you help me set the table?”

 

Plates, cutlery and glasses in hand, we walked through a corridor towards the living room. Unobtrusive, sensible colours and elegant, simple styles were contrasted with a few framed reproductions of classic film posters. On one side of the room, a huge light grey sofa with matching armchairs in front of a flat screen TV; on the other side, a dark wooden dining table with a view of the garden behind the house. The terrace door was open, so that the late summer air and the sounds of birds floated in, and although this was central London, it seemed very peaceful and private. I immediately felt at ease in this room.

As we set the table, he asked me about what I had seen and done during the last two days, and I told him about my trip down the river to Hampton Court. Then, Tom went to get the wine. Feeling a bit more relaxed now, I accepted a glass of a fruity Tempranillo red. As we clinked glasses, he looked at me and silently contemplated my face for a minute.

“I’m very glad you wrote to me in the way that you did,” he said. “It was actually really impressive to just, as it were, come up to me and give me your number and be like, call me! There are not many people who’ve done that in the past.” Now it was my turn to blush, and he reached out and lightly stroked my cheek with his fingers. “It would’ve been such a shame if we had never met.”

His gaze was intense, and suddenly I realised that we were standing a lot closer together than before. I felt the heat coming off him on those parts of my body where my summer clothes left my skin bare. I felt an electric energy sizzling between us. I felt his breath faintly rippling the little hairs on my forehead. The only thing I could see were his beautiful blue-green eyes inextricably linked to mine, and I felt sure he would kiss me at any moment. But suddenly his eyes grew wide and his eyebrows shot up.

“Oh fuck!” he exclaimed. “The food!”

He plonked down his glass on the table and, laughing and yelling apologies at the same time, ran off towards the kitchen. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and exhaled. My whole body was shaking, and I could feel an unmistakable moistness between my legs. It felt almost absurd, like taken out of a bad rom-com, that I could capture his attention so much he forgot about our food in the oven. But now I knew, definitely knew, that he wanted me, too. Nothing had ever felt as good.

While Tom was busy in the kitchen, I explored the room further. There was an impressive collection of CDs and vinyl records next to a hi-fi, and I spent some time looking through these. But soon my attention was captured by a door next to the hi-fi leading off into a very untidy room seemingly filled with tons of paper. The room – obviously Tom’s study or office – was medium sized and contained a large desk. Shelves covered every bit of the wall except for a single window, and everything, every single surface in that room, including the floor, was covered in paper: books, scripts, loose pages, the odd piece of clothing here and there, even a collection of used mugs scattered across the room, but mostly paper three inches deep. On top of the pile on the desk, I saw several secondary literature works about Shakespeare lying open, face down, dotted with colourful notes. Nearby lay a play script, heavily annotated and highlighted, the title of which I could not make out. Could this be something he was currently working on? The desire to step inside and just take a look was almost unbearable, but I stopped myself nevertheless. I did not think we were at the point yet where I could simply walk into his private study without asking first.

While I was still lingering at the door to the study, Tom came back from the kitchen carrying a huge bowl of pasta and ragout. He saw me, set down the bowl on the table and came towards me.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said, quite embarrassed. “I should have closed the door before you arrived.”

He did so now, very casually took my hand and led me back to the dining table. My heart leapt at his touch, but my curiosity had not quite died down yet.

“I’m not sorry,” I said. “I didn’t lie when I wrote that I’m a huge fan of your work, and that is obviously where you do a lot of work.” We sat down across from each other, and Tom began to fill our plates with pasta. “I couldn’t help but notice a play script in there,” I continued. “I’m dying to know what it is you are working on at the moment.”

He looked up and smiled, evidently delighted to be given the chance to talk about this. “As a matter of fact, I’ve just started working on a new stage production. That’s actually the reason that room is in such a state. Whenever I start a new play, first thing I do is I learn all my lines off by heart, as soon as I can and as long as it takes, until I can recite them in my sleep. Because I feel that you can’t properly start developing the character until you don’t have to worry about the lines anymore, you know?”

I nodded – that was my point of view as well.

“Anyway, when I’m learning the lines, I don’t do anything else. I try to completely immerse myself in the universe of the play, in the character’s mind-set, and I’m afraid things like cleaning up or tidying sometimes get – neglected a bit.” He smiled apologetically and started rolling the pasta on his fork. “To tell you the truth, my whole house looked like that until this morning. If it hadn’t been for you, it still would. But I managed to clean up just in time – at least the important rooms.”

He winked at me and I chuckled, wondering which other room apart from this one he meant.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna judge you,” I replied. In all honesty, I even felt a bit relieved to see this chaos, this flaw in his seeming perfectness. It made him more human and us more equal. “So what play is it that you’ve just started?”

“It’s a production at a small theatre here where I’ve worked before and which I’ve always loved – the Donmar Warehouse. We’re doing Shakespeare’s _Coriolanus_.”

It took me a minute to register this. “Wow, really?” I said finally. “That must be fate then. You don’t know how much I love Shakespeare’s plays! They’ve been my bread and butter at uni. I even wrote my final thesis about _Hamlet_.”

“Really, you did? About which aspect of the play?” he asked enthusiastically.

“About the depiction of the female characters, and then I contrasted that with how they are depicted in modern prose adaptations of the play.”

He looked impressed, and my heart leapt again. “Wow, I’d love to read that at some point.”

I smiled. “Definitely. But now you’ll have to tell me all about your play. I must admit I’ve never read _Coriolanus_. What is it about?”

 

All the way through dinner, we kept talking about Shakespeare and compared notes on _Hamlet_. He told me how much he would love to be given a chance to play the Dane at some point in his career. I told him how much I would love to see him in that role, why I had chosen this particular play for my thesis and what had intrigued me about it. We talked about what had drawn us to Shakespeare as children, as teenagers, as young adults, what still drew us to him. It was easy to talk to him now because the subject was so close to both our hearts. Talking animatedly about how Shakespeare’s dialogue comes alive on stage, he seemed to be glowing, his eyes sparkling, his expression completely enraptured. I could not take my eyes off him, he was so stunningly, outrageously beautiful. Then he started reciting Sonnet 116, gazing straight into my eyes, and I completely forgot the food in front of me and even my own name.

Soon, we left our half-eaten plates of cooling pasta on the table and went to sit on the sofa. Tom went to get another bottle of wine, and I laid down my head for a moment on the back of the sofa. I felt dizzy, but it was not because of the wine. It was the warm glow of absolute certainty that he was as enchanted by me as I was by him. There I lay, basking in the knowledge that all my dreams where at this moment coming true – and at the same time wholly convinced that, had he been anybody else other than this gorgeous creature that I had admired from a distance for so long, I would still be falling in love with him now.

Tom returned and proceeded to fill our glasses, then sat down sideways so he could face me on the sofa.

“So, tell me, what on earth possessed you to write me that postcard? Which was pure genius, by the way. Perfectly executed from start to finish.”

I giggled and, embarrassed, took a sip from my wine glass. His eyes were still on me, and the fingers of his left hand had, as if by accident, landed on the arm I had casually laid on the back of the sofa. I sat up sideways, too, facing him, careful not to move my arm away from his touch.

“I read it and immediately thought, _I have to meet this woman who is not intimidated by this whole ‘celebrity’ thing_.” He dismissed the concept with a casual wave of his right hand, absent-mindedly stroking my arm with his left. I felt shivers run down the back of my spine. “That takes some confidence. I find that very sexy.”

 _Here we go_ , I thought. The tension was almost unbearable. Three glasses of wine in and bolstered by his unmistakable advances, I became more daring, too.

“Well, actually the whole thing wasn’t my idea. It was my friend Liz who first put the idea to write to you in my mind. You see, I was completely crazy about you, and I got on her nerves constantly. So she said, _why don’t you try to meet him?_ And then I would see for myself whether you were really so perfect, and then I could –”

I hesitated. “Yes?” he said, stroking his lower lip with his index finger. With my heart thumping, I continued.

“– and then I could – seduce you or something.”

His fingers stopped stroking my arm, and for a split second I was suddenly afraid I had gone too far. But then he reached up to his glasses, slowly took them off and laid them on the table next to our glasses.

“Liz has a point,” he said, “because this plan of hers seems to be working just fine.”

He leaned over to me, and when his lips touched mine, something seemed to explode in my brain. His lips were soft, his breath sweet with a light scent of wine. I opened my mouth and our tongues touched. In a matter of seconds, our kisses grew from gentle to hungry and demanding. He started pressing me against the back of the sofa, gasping between kisses, and soon his hands had wandered under my top. With a twist of my shoulders and a lift of my arms, I indicated that I wanted him to pull the top over my head, and he took the hint. The top flew across the room, and his slender fingers soon made short, expert work of the clasp of my bra. I quickly unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it back across his shoulders. He was even more gorgeous underneath, his skin absolutely flawless and milky white.

Still kissing him, I touched my hand to his chest, let my fingertips slide down across his navel and between his legs, squeezing his penis through the thin fabric of his jeans. It was bigger than I had expected and already quite hard. He moaned against my mouth and pulled my hips towards him, turning me so that I could lie down on the sofa with my legs on either side of his body. While my hand slid towards his back and over his buttocks, he pressed his hips down on me, his lips wandering down my throat towards my breasts. I could feel his erection gently, but insistently pressing against me. My clit was already pulsating, my vagina aching with the desire to be filled. Suddenly, he pushed his hands into my trousers, his long fingers burrowing into my knickers and between my folds. I was already soaking wet, and that seemed to drive him wild. He thrust himself against me violently while his fingers gyrated on my clit and I moaned into his ear. My hands squeezed his buttocks, my hips rhythmically lifted against his – I wanted him inside me now.

I reached around and started to open his fly. He took this as his cue to pull my trousers and knickers down in one go, quickly extracting my legs from them and throwing them after the top. I now lay completely naked, sprawled beneath him and hungrily looking up at him as he was kneeling between my legs. His cock had emerged from his open fly, and it was enormous.

“Do you have a condom?” I asked him, a little breathlessly.

“Of course,” he said, got up and took off his trousers. Then he walked over to a small cupboard on the other side of the room, treating me to a lovely view of his backside. I lay on the sofa, my whole body throbbing, more ready than I had ever been in all my life. He came back with a small, square packet in his hand which he laid on my stomach as he knelt down again between my legs. Instead of opening it, however, he let his glorious erection hang in the air above my clit, stroked my thighs lightly and looked straight into my eyes.

“Are you completely sure you want this?” he asked me.

“Oh yes,” I said. “I’ve never wanted anything more than this. What about you?”

He grinned wickedly. “Hell yes!”

He grabbed the condom packet and ripped it open. As he rolled down the condom over his penis, the top of it dipped down and touched my clit, sending strokes of lightning through me. Then he put the tip of his cock to the mouth of my vagina and gently pushed inside me while his fingers played with my clit. I arched my back and moaned loudly. When he began thrusting into me, I answered each of his thrusts with a move of my hips against his. He bent down and, with his fingers still on my clit, kissed me hungrily again.

Our lovemaking seemed to go on forever while stars were exploding behind my closed lids and the tension built between my legs. Tom was moaning loudly with every thrust, speeding up constantly. I opened my eyes. The look in Tom’s eyes was possessive, completely enraptured. Looking down, I saw the muscles and tendons on his arms taught and straining, his abs working as he pulled himself out and thrust into me again. I spread my legs as far as they would go in order to admit him still deeper into me. Suddenly, he came with a loud, helpless cry, and a few seconds after that, it was my turn.

After the orgasm finally subsided, I crossed legs above his buttocks while he lay down panting on my chest. I closed my eyes for a moment and inhaled the wonderful aroma of sex and endorphins. When he kissed me again lazily before reluctantly sliding out of my vagina to take off the condom, it suddenly hit me: I had just had sex with Tom Hiddleston. I looked at him, basking in the afterglow, and smiled. This long-limbed, smooth, lean and firm body that had always been the stuff of my more enjoyable dreams – it had been mine, if only for a moment. He looked back at me and returned the smile.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was amazing.”

He pulled the condom off his penis and tied a knot into the top to trap the small lake of milky white fluid inside before letting it fall to the floor. Then he lay down on his side next to me on the sofa, his head propped up on one elbow. With a mellow, relaxed and entirely content smile on his face, he kissed me again. His free hand began to lightly stroke my skin from my shoulder down across my breast and towards my stomach.

“And I think you enjoyed yourself, too, yes?” he asked. I smiled.

“Oh yes, I can’t tell you how much I did.”

He grinned again and looked, for a second, like a proud schoolboy, even though his naked body nestled beside mine was very evidently that of a grown man. His cock, now limp and relaxed, too, lay lazily across my thigh.

“I’m so happy you’re here. And I think you’re right – we do seem to have a lot in common. When we talked about _Hamlet_ just before –“ His hand stopped just short of the line of my pubic hair and started wandering upwards again. “– it was the most extraordinary thing. I really felt like you were a kindred spirit, like we had been close like this for ages.”

I beamed, threaded my right arm through his and started caressing his back. “I feel the same way, Tom.”

His smile widened, and he let his gaze wander across my face again, almost lovingly. “I hope you’ll stay for a bit then. I’d love to pick your brain on a few other subjects as well.”

I lifted my face to his and kissed him. “Gladly.” I seemed my dream was not yet at an end.

He returned my kiss more passionately and lightly squeezed my left breast. I could feel his cock twitching against my thigh – he was obviously ready for a second round, and so was I.

“I only regret one thing,” he said. “I’m very sorry, but I’ve run out of condoms. Stupid of me, I should’ve checked before. But that one was the last.”

I threw back my head, laughing. “Well, here’s another reason to thank my friend Liz,” I said. “She made me bring condoms. I’ve got a few in my handbag.”

I indicated a red leather bag leaning against the sofa. Tom beamed at me, delighted and then hungry again. “I think I’m gonna buy a present for Liz after this,” he whispered, then kissed me again while his hand slipped between my opening thighs.

 

I had not gotten back to my hotel again that night. We had fucked until we ran out of condoms, on the sofa, on the dining table, on the floor and finally in Tom’s bedroom which turned out to be the other room he had managed to clean before my visit. Then, completely exhausted, we collapsed into each other’s arms on his bed and just talked until the early hours about a thousand things. We shared stories about school and uni, talked about our love of the theatre and compared the very different, but equally formative experiences we both had had there. Tom told me about his time in Africa with Unicef, and I told him about how I came to leave the theatre and end up in my dead-end job. Finally, sleepiness took over, and we curled up around each other and went to sleep.

In the morning, Tom had rehearsals to go to, so we reluctantly parted. Before I stepped out the front door, Tom grabbed me and kissed me so passionately I became weak at the knee.

“I’ll see you again, I hope?” he said, still holding me pressed tight to his body.

I smiled up at him. “Definitely!”

I went back to my hotel and, after a hot shower and a lavish breakfast, resumed my sightseeing. It felt like the city had been washed and re-painted overnight. Everything seemed infinitely more beautiful, and I walked through it like I was the Queen. I felt invincible. The memory of the night before – our hours of lovemaking followed by hours of conversation, the way Tom had looked at me and constantly caressed me – burned inside me. My blood was pounding in my ear as I walked the streets of Camden Town, and I realised I had fallen in love with him – for real this time, because I was finally getting to know him as a person.

In the evening, Tom called me. “Hey gorgeous, how was your day?”

“Great – just strolling around the city, enjoying the sunshine. How about you, how was the rehearsal?”

“Good, productive. Listen, we’re just finishing up here. Would you like to come pick me up? We could go grab a bite together.”

If possible, the sunshine got a little brighter then. “Sounds great! I’ll be there in half an hour.”

 

And we went from there. For the remainder of my stay in London we had met every evening, spending hours taking walks and talking and getting to know each other. On one evening, we went to the theatre, and on another, to the cinema, sneaking in through a side entrance so that Tom would not be noticed. On his day off, he had even taken me to see the First Folio, which was definitely the second best experience of my life. The whole time, Tom was always completely focussed on me, gazing into my eyes, twirling my hair around his long fingers or holding my hand and stroking my fingers with his thumb. There was no doubt that he was falling for me, too.

And each night, we made love for hours, greedily taking possession of each other’s bodies, slowly exploring and learning the little tricks we could use to drive each other wild. Soon, I had become completely casual in his company, though I still pinched myself every morning when I woke up in his arms.

All too soon, the day of my departure arrived. As the taxi was waiting in front of his house, he had wrapped me in his arms and kissed me.

“This is not good-bye,” he said. “I want to see you again – soon.”

I nodded and gulped down my tears – I did not want to leave this dream and return to my boring life. “I’ll come over again this winter, if I get leave from work,” I said. “In November, or January at the latest, for your premiere.”

He pressed himself against me, burying his nose in my neck. We had fucked for the last time barely twenty minutes ago, and he still smelled like sex.

“I don’t know if I can wait that long,” he growled against my skin. Then he looked at me and, cupping my face in his hands, added, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

A hot wave rushing through me almost made me faint. “I’m falling in love with you, too,” I whispered. Then I kissed him, and the taxi driver waiting outside honked the horn of his car twice.

 

~~~~

 

A beeping sound from my phone yanked me out of these blissful and cherished memories, and I blinked at the pristinely white surroundings to get my bearing. The coffee vendor had switched on his portable radio, and from a distance, I could hear the thin, tinny sound of Slade’s _Merry Christmas Everybody_. My tea had turned cold in its cardboard cup, and my body along with it. I took my phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen. It was a message from Liz.

_Hi ya, I’m planning an awesome Christmassy get-together on the 26th and you’d better be there. Be sure to bring that gorgeous fella of yours. xx Liz_

That gorgeous fella – my gorgeous fella, my Tom. I mentally kicked myself. What had I been thinking? Had I completely forgotten about what my life used to be like before we first met? Sure, he was not perfect – he was prone to be unreliable and forget important things when he was busy, he never tidied the creative chaos in his study unless forced to at gunpoint, and he left the bathroom window open for hours on end in the middle of winter. But he was still Tom fucking Hiddleston, the man I had dreamed about night and day for years. Three years ago, I would have killed a busload of grannies for the chance of waking up in his bed and stepping into his freezing bathroom. And now he was my boyfriend and he loved me. Was I really willing to throw all that away?

No, I was not. As quickly as my frozen limbs would allow it, I got up, threw the cardboard cup into a bin and started walking in the direction of home. I realised I would have to apologise profusely to him for my shameful conduct and the things I had said to him. Now shivering with the cold, I stomped through the snow in an attempt to warm my body with exercise and started to compose my apology in my head when I saw Tom up ahead, quickly walking towards me with a blanket under his arm and a concerned look on his face.

“There you are, my love!” His voice was full of relief. “I’ve been looking for you for twenty minutes.” He shook out the blanket, threw it over my shoulders and wrapped me in his arms. “God, you must be freezing! What were you thinking running off like that? I saw the snow and immediately came after you, but you were already gone. I would’ve called you, but I’ve left my phone at home.”

As he rubbed my arms and back, warmth flooded my system as much as relief did. “I’m so sorry, Tom! I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean it. Will you forgive me?”

He laughed softly and kissed me. “Of course, you silly thing. Actually it’s me who needs to apologise. I promise to be more considerate of your needs in the future.”

He kissed the frozen tip of my nose and smiled at me, his eyes glittering a little wetly with the cold. Melting snow glistened on the thick, red locks of his hair. He was so beautiful inside and out – how had I ever been cross with this man?

“Thank you, Tom. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Now let’s go home. I don’t want to waste this day standing around in the cold. I think I’d much rather spend it in bed with you.”

He winked at me, and with his arm around my shoulder over the blanket, we set off for home.

 

~~ The End ~~

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading all the way to the end! Since this story is about three times as long as the others so far, it took me about three times as long to write - so if you've read and liked the others, thank you also for waiting patiently for the next chapter in the life of Tom and his girl. Hope you'll like this one, too.


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